Customer Reviews

The Hippopotamus

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS is the second and best of Stephen Fry's three novels. If you have read and enjoyed THE LIAR or MAKING HISTORY you will adore this book. If you enjoyed THE LIAR but were frustrated by it's poorly contrived ending you just may want to make love to THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. Fry's wit is razor sharp yet hearty, his humor will slap you in the face and then give you a hug. It is rare these days to stop reading just because you have to laugh so hard, then sit quietly for a moment pondering the art, craft or trick of genius that made you laugh so hard before laughing again. Fry is an artist, a craftsman, and a supremely clever rhetorician with quite a few tricks up his sleeve.

Fry's protagonist here is much the different fellow from the twentyish Adrian Healey of THE LIAR. Ted Wallace is sixty-six years old, "an unregenerate snob," and a once notable and occasionally anthologized minor poet, whose physical form in motion "resembles in sight and sound nothing so much as a bin-liner full of yoghurt." His mental form has not been all it's cracked up to be either, the story opens with his dismissal with cause from his theatre reviewing job: he was shouting out his criticisms while the performance was still in progress. Just when it looks like malt whiskey-induced cirrhosis can't be far down the road, his long-lost goddaughter offers him a chance at redemption. A chance he'd never take were it not for the hefty check she gives him to perform the task from which the rest of the book derives it suspense--visiting the summer house of his other godchild, younger son of an incredibly rich and powerful former British army reserve buddy, and reporting back on the mystical goings on there. And what twisted fun we have accompanying him on this summer in the high country!

As a story, THE HIPPOPOTAMUS demonstrates a handsome integration of the accidental and the intentional. It is happily free from contrivance, and is made all the more hilarious and alive by its being written, for the most part, in letter form. Fry also finds a few well-placed moments to proclaim his own theory of art: "It is the only thing that not only cannot be disproved, but can actually and tangibly and incontrovertibly proved." Damn the psychotherapists, priests and druids all to Vienna, Hell, and Avalon--give a man Shakespeare and he will be saved!

Fry's style is richly allusive and admirably erudite. It also savagely satirizes its own pretentiousness. Fry has it both ways and knows it--not a bad trick. THE HIPPOPOTAMUS is both bestial fun and glorious art. If you can handle both, this book is simply not to be missed.

"There's none so evil-minded as those with a moral mission, and none so pure in heart as the depraved." Those words, spoken by curmudgeonly, ribald, rabble-rousing Ted Wallace, aptly summarize the philosophy of this most entertaining read. And blustery, hard-drinking Ted charges through the pages of Stephen Fry's novel, THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, like a stallion on steroids. And there is some "horsing around" in this book, to be sure.

Fry's writing style, as he uses Ted to wax philosophical on everything from the battle of the sexes to drunken politicians, is an abolute delight. The author's words flow smoothly and precisely, culminating in a punchline guaranteed to prompt a snicker, if not a robust laugh. Ted, a washed-up poet down on his luck, is paid a handsome sum by Jane, his god-daughter, to investigate some very strange events taking place at the estate of her uncle, Lord Michael Logan. Seems Michael's teenage son David, who also happens to be Ted's godson, is at the center of a bizarre series of "miracle healings." And the manner in which young Davey is healing. . .well, let's just say it is not for the faint of heart.

With cranky and skeptical and irreverent panache, Ted gets to the bottom of the mystery, and presents his conclusions to Michael's loved ones and house guests in a scene that had me rolling on the floor. Unfortunately, Fry's ending is a little weak, with Wallace slipping out of his nasty character; but this flaw was not enough to proudly rate this work five stars.

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS, as mentioned before, is not for the faint of heart. There are some passages that many may find extremely disturbing, so readers with a "moral mission," as described above, should best look elsewhere. Stephen Fry has a remarkable gift for writing comedic novels; for those who enjoy the genre this book is a must-read.
--D. Mikels

Stephen Fry is a very amusing guy and he's created one of the truly memorable modern comic characters in the figure of Ted Wallace. Think of a cross between Dylan Thomas at the dyspeptic end of his career and The Ginger Man, and you'll have some notion of what you are in for. Lots of great, misanthropic musings on the fallen state of civilization, with several screamingly funny throw away lines inserted here and there like verbal land mines. At several points in the first two thirds of the book I had to put the book aside and laugh (to the point of tears) for a full five minutes at a time.

Fans of the Larry David show on HBO would enjoy Ted. Like Larry, Ted is a person that most everyone hates, yet he nevertheless remains likeable, somehow. He's a complete boor to his children, his ex, his employers, his friends, yet his sense of humor keeps the reader thinking that somewhere beneath the blubbering bombast there has to be a shred of humanity remaining. As the novel progresses, more and more shreds are revealed.

This is part of the problem. Ted, the wise-cracking curmudgeon, is much more interesting and entertaining than Ted, the suddenly avuncular, caring godfather and father of the last few chapters. Likewise, Fry's plot, which holds up fairly well the first two thirds, unravells rather disappointingly in the finale. One more instance of a very clever writer having a bit of navigating difficulties when it comes to satisfying resolutions. I'd much rather Ted had stayed in character and had kept on being his unpleasant self, with the possibility of Fry picking up the character in subsequent books. I don't see that possibility here.

AS for other aspects of the book, some work, some don't. The epistlatory format is hit and miss. These are some really looonnngg letter writers. The minor characters are more charicatures than fleshed out, believable figures, though this is one of the marks of satirical writing in general and not that big a distraction. Some of the female characters, in particular give Ted every bit as good as they get in terms of verbal skirmishes. A gay character gets to be tiresome with his mannered expressions. He starts out funny, but he's definitely not what could be termed a sympathetic character, by any stretch.

While The Hippopotamus doesn't hurl Fry into the front ranks of modern British satirists, it is a very decent effort. Though it is decidedly uneven, I have no problem recommending it as an often funny, entertaining read. 4 1/2 Stars.

BEK

If you're considering the purchase of this novel because of its author's portrayal of Jeeves in Masterpiece Theater's productions of Jeeves and Wooster, be warned! You may wish to reconsider. Whereas Stephen Fry's writing style may pay homage to the late great P.G. Wodehouse in its verbal effluence, his chosen main character, Ted, or Tedward as one character calls him, is a far, far cry from the irreproachable and virtually infallible "gentleman's personal gentleman" that was Jeeves. He is a grumpy, flatulent ex-poet who has become disillusioned with . . . well, just about everything really. One is left wondering how much Mr. Fry shares this man's opinions for they are at once outrageously cynical, overtly snobbish and-at least in the case of his diagnosis of male sexuality-devastatingly accurate. Such questions are of course ultimately futile and meaningless but one can't help wondering. To be honest, however, few of us couldn't find at least a little of ourselves in this crotchety old fart. And I suppose that's what makes him ultimately so endearing.

In short, this is a dirty, smutty book chock full of outrageous social faux pas, cynicism, sacrilege, irreverence, vulgarity and crudeness . . . and I enjoyed it very much. It's extremely well written, extremely frank in its discussion of human sexuality and the evils of opulent interior design, and above all extremely British.

So, if you're after the genteel machinations of the upper class twits of yesteryear, stick with the source and pull out that trusty old copy of Jeeves and Wooster. If, on the other hand, you're after a healthy dose of modern English outrageousness, this would be a good bet. Pour yourself a glass of whisky and get ready to read the juicy bits to whoever's close by, because you'll be hearing a lot of, "What? What was it this time?" from them. Oh, yes, it's also good for the complexion. I read it on my last visit to the seaside and couldn't stop reading long enough to get into my swimwear. The sun never touched my pearly white skin. Saved a bundle on sunscreen, too.

Reading this excellent novel while on a train I was more than once scolded by a fellow passenger for laughing out loud too often! Apparently my 'laugh count' was at least 3 laughs per minute. Now considering that I very seldom laugh out loud while reading I think this proves what an exceptionally funny book Fry's "Hippopotamus" must be.
Indeed, at no point in the book was I bored. Fry successfully managed to keep even the long necessary narrative passages, in which nothing of relavance happens, interesting by using cynical remarks, sparky anecdotes and constant change of perspective. Although the protagonist is seemingly "an old, sour, womanising, cantankerous, whiskey-sodden beast of a failed poet and drama critic" (taken from the back cover) he immediately becomes sympathetic to the reader because of his outrageous honesty (he was fired from his post as a drama critic for shouting out what he thought of the play he was watching). He uncovers the hypocrisy of the others staying at Swafford Hall, who are all only there to find out more about David Logan, a 15-year-old rumoured to possess incredible healing powers. During his stay at the Logan's country house, Ted Wallace witnesses the remarkable recovery of a horse, whom (as the reader finds out) the mystical adolescent had had sexual contact with the night before (a scene, which even managed to shock me - and that is quite hard). But undeterred by this apparently supernatural experience, Ted, being the down-to-earth atheist that he is, refuses to believe what he sees.
"The Hippopotamus" is incredibly entertaining and must be recommended to the open-minded. Yet I must warn the more conservative of you that this book could make you want to exorcise Fry and burn him publicly!

I was doubly fortunate to listen to the audiobook read by the author, and found it to be a breathtaking tour de force. Wonderful characterisations, both in the text and as read. The plot is fanciful - some may find it too much so - but it all hangs together and is far beyond the run-of-the mill creation.

I advise you to skip all the reviews here that retell the story, and just read it yourself. Part of the fun is not having any idea how Mr Fry is going to resolve the impossible story he has contrived.

I was put off somewhat by the very frank descriptions of male sexual function, but I got used to that. In retrospect, my primary criticism is that the lengthy digression into Logan family history is unnecessary. It's as if the author has another whole saga in him on that subject, and wanted to do at least part of it here. He certainly demonstrates his skill, but it breaks the focus on this tightly crafted house party comedy-drama.

First rate entertainment, and literary and verbal art. Highly recommended.

When your first novel is as good as _The Liar_, it's only natural that your follow-up would be a bit of a comedown. When you're Stephen Fry, though, a 'comedown' book can still be better than most of what's out there.

The eponymous Hippopotomas is Ted Wallace, a cantankerous theatre critic who drinks too much, and his skeptical investigations into 'miraculous' goings-on at his old friend's mansion in the country. That's the plot, really; it doesn't sound like much, but the characters pull it off (for which see below). It's a lot more straightforward than _The Liar_, very much in the mystery genre with clues sprinkled throughout which are tied together at the end in a maddeningly logical way that will have you kicking yourself - unless you're more observant than me and actually figure it out yourself, of course.

While this book is very, very funny and very, very readable - stamped with Fry through and through - I will say that it didn't engage me emotionally the way most of his other work does. That's okay, though; it did engage me on an intellectual level, and the writing itself is a treat. One reviewer has called it 'fruity', and I can't think of a better word; it'll have you wanting to read out loud, just to savour the phrasing.

Much has been made of this book's "shocking" nature, but most broad-minded adults should be OK with it; it does include a lot of graphic sex of various descriptions (including bestiality), but never of a gratuitous nature (I know it might seem hard to imagine un-gratuitous bestiality, but trust me) and certainly never in a way that resembles pornography - except as satire, possibly.

It's definitely not for kids aged 4-8, though - let's hope Amazon fix this soon!

This novel simply screams Stephen Fry on every page, which can't be a bad thing. It genuinely caused me to laugh out loud which is increasingly uncommon in this day and age. I did not find the contents shocking, probably because I have long been a fan of Mr. Fry and his work and have come to expect such sexual references as we find in this book. 'The Hippopotamus' is certainly an absorbing read and Ted is a thoroughly convincing character. The socially embarrassing situations the various characters find themselves in are often shamefully familiar and Fry's ability to create personalities that are so easy to relate to, or dislike intensly is remarkable. Perhaps this is not a novel for the faint-hearted, but I would strongly recommend it to the more open minded, or those prepared to open their minds a little.

I can think of something better to do than read Stephen Fry's "The Hippopotamus," and that would be to have the author himself read it to you on audio cassette. Having long admired Fry's acting talent, I was pleasantly surprised to discover he's also a writer. Subsequently finding out that he's an absolutely SUPERB writer was a huge bonus. And if his writing is wickedly hilarious, his insights surgically on the mark, then his presentation of his own words in the precise characterizations he imagined while setting the words down raises his work to a level of delightful entertainment that simply defies description.

Leave it to other reviewers to provide pithy descriptions of the book -- I just came to say if you don't hear it read by this consummate performer, you're missing half the fun.

This novel, published in 1994, has reminded the critics of certain other writers. I can myself see a resemblance to the narrator of Kingsley Amis's The Green Man in this story told by an ageing, bibulous, randy has-been putting up a show of curmudgeonliness much as Amis himself liked to do. I suppose there are distant echoes of Waugh too, the Waugh of the Diaries and Brideshead Revisited. On the other hand, readers of the Guardian newspaper around 1994 will remember a character created by the clever and wicked cartoonist Posy Simmons who is very similar indeed to Fry's Ted Wallace (the hippo in person) - struggling writer and schoolmasterish spelling pedant in addition to the characteristics already mentioned. That resemblance, whichever way the influence worked, is altogether too close to be coincidence. I sensed another possible influence too, from 25 years earlier. There is an odd film by Pasolini 'Theorem' about a young man who exerts untoward sexual influence over all around him, and for all the countless differences of tone and style from this book I can't help suspecting a kinship with that too.

The theorem here is one that perms situations of, shall we say, a kind we don't much encounter in our humdrum daily lives. It is not about characterisation at all. The characters are a harlequinade of weirdos, meant as vivid and not as realistic. The revelations they seem to take in their stride without missing a step are surreal, but I actually think I'm even more amazed by the mental agility, not to say the emotional pliancy, that they display at the end when Ted himself (either stepping out of character or reverting to his earlier persona briefly mentioned in a previous chapter) explains all. What it all seems to me to come down to is this - if someone is as brilliantly witty and ingenious as Stephen Fry is, then his novels will be more about a peacock display of the wit and ingenuity than about anything else. The phrase-making is coruscating, the eye for people and the ear for the way they talk are acute, and the repressed but desperate sense of how ridiculous everyone and everything are pervades chapter after chapter. As you might expect, there is a darker side to a personality like this, and that comes through explicitly in the scene in nazi Germany. It also comes through in the incident of the boy and the horse, but if that stops you in your tracks I urge you to continue, because you will get not one subsequent surprise but two.

The final surprises come, hardly surprisingly, at the end. You would never guess the real situation, but there is no inevitability to it. It is just dam' ingenious, and it's about being ingenious and nothing else, not even about being convincing. A hundred other endings would have done just as well, provided they were clever enough. It's not hard to hear the black dog of depression baying through the music of this elegant masked ball, but if you have a good ear for overtones I believe you ought to hear something else as well. There is a real tone of human sympathy and downright kindness in Fry. It's something I sense in his public persona as an actor and entertainer, and something I sense in at least some of his novels. I won't say that it's what I read them for, because I read them for the brilliant chatter more than anything else, but there is an odd but agreeable aftertaste to it all, strange as it may be at times and of course strictly not for the Moral Majority, at least not when they are in full moral mode. I have a hunch that the poet (whom I adapt with apologies) spoke for Fry before Fry was born

The stars did not deal him the worst they could do:
His pleasures are plenty, his troubles are two.
But O, his two troubles, they reave him of rest,
The brains in his head and the heart in his breast.